Sunday, 7 July 2013

Orchids all around us

Sunday 7th July 2013

The orchid season around our local patch as just about peaked up here in Lancashire and it's another excellent year but about 3 weeks later than normal owing to the late spring. First a few shots of my back garden from an angle I've never viewed it from before. I've been removing the lower branches of a tree that outgrown it's position before it's felled later in the summer.

Over the years orchids have colonized the garden and on this years count there's about 100 scattered around the garden they're mostly Common Spotted but a couple of Marsh Orchids (hybrids) have appeared next to the pond.

Marsh Orchid (hybrid?)

Common Spotted Orchids

Up in the Fields near to our house a good show of Marsh Orchids and common Spotted Orchids and many hybrids.

On the local industrial estate Bee Orchids are growing on the lawned areas surrounding the units where the grass hasn't been mowed.

Finally an unusual orchid has appeared on the local nature reserve and the jury are still out trying to identify it.

Jeff & Sue Hodgson kindly pointed out that the unusual orchid on the local nature reserve was probably the Common Spotted Orchid (sub-Species) Dactylorhiza fuchsii Var. rhodochila. A picture almost identical to my photo is shown on page 108 in Wild Guides.... Britain's Orchids by David Lang. Thanking Jeff & Sue for the information.

My name is David Crossley I am married with two grown up children and five grandchildren. I am a retired Engineering Instructor, retired in 1999. I have many interests - I am a member of Burnley Film Makers, an amateur film maker and photographer, a walker,all aspects of the great outdoors, wildlife gardening, wild life ponds and wild orchids. The highlight of my walking was probably trekking through the Himalayas in Nepal.

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